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Death and Survival of African Languges in the 21St Century

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Death and Survival of African Languges in the 21St Century International Journal of Linguistics and Communication September 2014, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 127-144 ISSN: 2372-479X (Print) 2372-4803 (Online) Copyright © The Author(s). 2014. All Rights Reserved. Published by American Research Institute for Policy Development DOI: 10.15640/ijlc.v2n3a6 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.15640/ijlc.v2n3a6 Death and Survival of African Languges in The 21st Century Prof. Kithaka wa Mberia, PhD1 Department of Linguistics and Languages University of Nairobi Abstract ________________________________________________________________________ Africa, like many other parts of the world, is faced with language endangerment. According to United Nations Educational and Scientific Organisation (UNESCO), “language is in danger when its speakers cease to use it, or use it in an increasingly reduced number of communicative domains, and cease to pass it on from one generation to the next. That is, there are no new speakers, either adults or children”. A number of languages in Africa are faced with a situation similar to the one described above. Hence, they can be said to be endangered. Indeed, some of them are already dead. Languages such as Bongomek, originally spoken in present-day Western Kenya are no longer spoken. Other languages such as El Molo, Okiek, Watwa, Hansa are spoken by very few people. They are, therefore, endangered. Yet, there is a third category of languages which previous have been endangered but whose fortunes have been reversed through certain actions some of which were not geared towards language revitalization. In this paper, I discuss language survival and language death in Africa within the broader theme of language endangerment. I base my discussion on information on African languages. I describe factors that have led to the death of the already extinct languages as well as those that are responsible for the endangerment of the languages facing an uncertain future. Finally, I discuss measures that have resulted in the reversal of the fortunes of some of the endangered languages. ________________________________________________________________________ Introduction One of the most important issues in sociolinguistics today is the vexing language endangerment. It is an issue that affects all continents of the world and which is a big threat to human linguistic and cultural heritage. 1 The University of Nairobi, Kenya 128 International Journal of Linguistics and Communication, Vol. 2(3), September 2014 It is a matter of great concern not only for linguists but also for organizations such as United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) which has commissioned some work on the phenomenon with a view to better understanding it. Individual scholars have also spent substantial amount of time researching the area. As a consequence of the studies so far undertaken, the seriousness of the threat to world language heritage has become clear. In this paper, I explore language endangerment as it relates to Africa. I begin the paper with a presentation of what constitutes endangerment as the issue is understood so far. In so doing, I refer to some of the studies and reports that have come out in the last ten or so years. The studies, by some of biggest names in sociolinguistics, are insightful and by throwing some light on them I build a foundation upon which the rest of the paper rests. The next section of the paper deals with the complexity of language situation in Africa. I describe multilingualism on the continent. There is a close connection between bilingualism or multilingualism and language endangerment. Except in the rare occasion when a community might be wiped out by a disease or natural calamity such as a major volcanic explosion, language death entails replacement of one language by another. Such replacement is preceded by bilingualism or multilingualism. People do not lose the only language available to them for communication. People stop using a language because there is an alternative for their communication needs. After the two background sections, I discuss language death in Africa looking at the causes of the phenomenon and giving actual examples of seriously endangered languages on the continent. In some instances, I describe language specific circumstances that have led to the languages being endangered. Of course, the Africa linguistic terrain is not all gloom. Consequently, to give a balanced picture of the language situation on the continent, I also argue that there are many languages on the continent that, currently, have a fairly high level of vitality and, therefore, cannot be said to be endangered. I conclude the paper by discussing possible interventions that can reverse or delay death of the endangered languages. I also present actual cases whereby, through interventions, languages that were on the brink of death are bouncing back to higher levels of vitality. Prof. Kithaka wa Mberia 129 1. Language Endangerment Africa, like many other parts of the world, is faced with language endangerment. According to United Nations Educational and Scientific Organisation’s Ad Hoc expert group on Endangered Languages (Brezinger et al, 2003:2), “language is in danger when its speakers cease to use it, or use it in an increasingly reduced number of communicative domains, and cease to pass it on from one generation to the next. That is, there are no new speakers, either adults or children”. A number of languages in Africa are faced with a situation similar to the one described above. Hence, they can be said to be endangered. Indeed, some of them are already extinct. On some accounts, languages such as Bongomek, originally spoken in present-day Western Kenya, have no speakers. They have only left behind traces in place names such as “Bungoma” which is a name of a county in Western Kenya. Other languages such as El Molo, Okiek, Watwa, Hansa and Rendille are not only spoken by few people but also have low intergeneration transmission. They are, therefore, endangered. In this article, I address the issue of language endangerment in Africa. I begin the paper by looking at the complex multilingualism on the continent. Except in the rare occasions where a natural catastrophe wipes out a community and, with it, its language - a situation which has not obtained in Africa - language endangerment is intrinsically connected with bilingualism or multilingualism. I look at different approaches and parameters used to gauge degrees of language endangerment including the criteria suggested by the UNESCO Ad hoc Committee on Endangered Languages as well as the evaluation tool used by Ethnologue. I then go through factors, most of them already in the literature, that lead to language endangerment whose final stage is language death. After that foundation, I present the two scenarios of languages in Africa. The first scenario of endangered languages is that of languages with a very low level of vitality and which are, therefore, in danger of death. I use actual examples from Kenya’s language repertoire to concretize my argumentation. The second scenario is that of languages that have a reasonably high vitality and which are not with any immediate of language death. I end the paper with a discussion on the need for interventions against language death, measures that have already been taken along those lines and other possibilities that exist. 130 International Journal of Linguistics and Communication, Vol. 2(3), September 2014 2. Complexity of the Linguistic Situation in Africa The African continent is characterizes by extensive language diversity. According to the 5th Edition of Ethnologue: Languages of the World (Gordon, 2005), there are 6,912 languages spoken in the world today. 2,092 of these languages are spoken in Africa by about 0.7 billion people. The only continent with a bigger share of human linguistic heritage than Africa is Asia which boasts of 2269 languages spoken by about 3.5 billion people. Africa’s indigenous languages have been classified according to different classification criteria. One of the most widely accepted classifications is the one proposed by Greenberg (1963). According to the classification, African indigenous languages fall into four language families, namely, Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, Afro- asiatic and Khoisan. Niger-Congo is estimated to have 1,436 languages (Grimes, 2000). This makes it the family with the largest number of languages not only in Africa but in the entire world ahead of Austronesian with 1236 languages. It covers most of sub-Saharan Africa and is spoken by more than 360 million Africans. The Afro-Asiatic family comprises 371 languages and its speakers number approximately 175 million. Its family members are found in most of the northern part of the continent as well as in the Horn of Africa. The Nilo-Saharan family has about 196 languages and it is spoken by 11 million people in parts of Central and Eastern Africa. The Khoisan family has about 35 languages. The languages in this family are very small compared to the languages of the other three families. The entire family has approximately 100,000 speakers. Khoisan languages are mainly found in Namibia and Botswana. Since some languages in the group are larger than others, it is reasonable to assume that some of the Khoisan languages have only hundreds of speakers. Africa speaks not only its indigenous tongues. Several European languages are also spoken on the continent. English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian are used in, respectively, the former British, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian colonies. Unlike the majority of the indigenous African languages, the European languages serve as the media of education and are used in other official domains including communication in government offices, law courts and (in most countries) national assemblies. Being the media of education makes them the languages of modern professions and white color jobs. They are, therefore, associated with modernity, opportunity and upward social mobility. Prof. Kithaka wa Mberia 131 These characteristics give them immense prestige compared to indigenous African languages.
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